Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
This series final chapter reveals the identity of the “red flecks” in the preceding post’s landscape view.
There’s no finer location in which to experience the two relevant species in their natural state than Fitzgerald River National Park’s East Mount Barren.
If you wish to enjoy a natural experience of them (both species are now popular with gardeners) the only places where you can have that experience are all in or near to Fitzgerald River National Park.
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There is no such thing as “the best place on earth”.
However, there is certainly no better place on earth than Fitzgerald River National Park, if you love unspoilt coastal magnificence, and flowering plants, most especially ones that grow – naturally at least – in only one “place”.
The photo was taken near the Park’s eastern end, whilst standing atop East Mount Barren, looking west.
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Australia has six black cockatoo species.
All are intelligent, sociable, spectacularly agile, and have very powerful beaks.
The world’s only two white-tailed black cockatoo species – both endangered – are endemic to southwest Western Australia.
My beloved and I are lucky enough to see and hear one of them – Carnaby’s Black Cockatoo – on hundreds of occasions, every year.
The featured image shows behaviour which is very familiar to us.
The other photos show something “new”, at least to us.
Comments closedPictured above and below: Hakea victoria, known as Royal Hakea.
Arguably, it has the most spectacularly variegated leaves of any plant on earth; the individuals in this post are by no means unusually splendid examples.
Fitzgerald River National Park is its stronghold, and all naturally occurring Royal Hakeas are within easy driving distance of “the Fitz”.
Most photos in this post were taken on a morning ascent of East Mount Barren on 21 September 2021.
One CommentThe featured image has not been photoshopped; it is not a composite of monochrome and full colour.
Such juxtapositions of the “drab/dark/subdued/almost monochrome” with the “brilliantlly/exquisitely/flamboyantly colourful” are commonplace in southwestern Australia.
Here, some of the world’s poorest soils are in fact the key to an astonishing, highly diverse array of endemic flora.
In global terms, the relevant “mountain” is in fact a relatively modest hill, rising 311 metres above the nearby ocean.
However, if you love wildflowers, this hill has few peers, anywhere…
2 CommentsThis post enables you to see how West Beach sits within the expansive landscape/seascape of Fitzgerald River National Park’s eastern section.
(the western section is quite different, and equally splendid, but “the Fitz” is huge…so even the view from atop the Hopetoun end’s best vantage point will only give you a view over the park’s eastern section)
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This series’ concluding image was taken at 2.42 pm on 20 September 2021.
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This series’ penultimate image shows the western end of West Beach.
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Today’s image offers a closer look at part of the rock-face which was featured in episode 7 of this sequence.
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Schistosity is a thin layering of the rock produced by metamorphism that permits the rock to be easily split into thin layers or flakes.
(rocks with a high degree of schistosity are commonly known as schists. Typically, they have a “grainy” appearance)
Some schists look quite prosaic.
Others are very beautiful.
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